Tuesday, November 2, 2010

FNP, No Problem: How it Makes 5th Edition Games More Interesting


Feel No Pain has been a big topic in the Blogosphere the last couple days and it has caused some to think that USRs are being given out, eliminating the flavor of some units who used to have it, while others have said that perhaps it is an answer to making fragile units tougher against the heavier offensive power seen in 5th edition 40k. Articles that explore these cases can be found Sepulchre of Heroes and Sons of Taurus. Son of Taurus presents a very well-thought out article and while commenting, I thought the matter may require another point of view.
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As presented in the aforementioned article, Taurus points out that Feel No Pain had its humble roots in old school Death Company and worked its way up into 3.5 and 4th edition with Khorne Champs and Plague Marines. Now, before we move on, we see the USR used here in a very static position. It just makes these units tough to kill with an extra save. This just results in more shots placed on them to eliminate them and little other thought strategically. It made it easy to field tough units and to identify tough targets, but did it add anything to game play?
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As 5th edition drew in, we saw Orks gain FNP through Painboyz, followed by Space Marine Apothecaries with FNP benefits. This was the first time we started to see FNP be really being explored as a USR that can be purchased with an upgrade. It limited it's use to certain units, making those units keys in the lists they run in, but also limited to very expensive, hard hitting units (nob bikers and bike command squads in particular).
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After that, we saw the USR placed on Lone Wolves and due to their Kill Point rules, we see it become slightly more strategic. It takes a little more power to take out the Lone Wolf. He needs to die for the Space Wolf player to benefit. If he isn't killed, he will also likely do some damage, so the enemy also has to think about what he is doing to himself when he decides to play around the LW or kill it. Not a whole lot of impact on game play here, but things are starting to become interesting.
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Next came the Tyranids with the Tervigon. The tervigon is a walking strategic asset in the lists that include it, capable of being a force multiplier, literally by pooping gants and also from it's potential to buff those gants through upgrades, increase its synaptic range and of course, place FNP wherever it is most needed. The Tervigon is needed for the Nid player's synergy and for lists that include the Tervigon, it is often a key support unit, if not THE key support unit. Therefore list building and tactics on the table are effected both for the Nid player and his opponent. For the opponent, taking away the Tervigon can hurt the Tyranid army's synergy and potentially cripple his scoring dynamics, though focusing on the Tervigons often comes at the cost of ignoring really dangerous elements of the tyranid player's list. For the Tyranid player, it is important at all times to be aware of movement and the range of synapse and the buffing areas, the range of FNP and the potential for damage done to the gants when a Tervigon is close to dying. Here, FNP is realized as a stratagem and adds to the dynamics of list building and game play.
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The Blood Angels gave 5th edition the Sanguinary Priests, who give off the FC and FNP bubbles, often hidden in units that are also decent to deadly in CC. The BA player knows he has to protect his priests and that facts forces a style of play and an element of strategy to both his list and his game play because if he loses them too quick, he loses the benefits he paid for and potentially extra kill points. For the opponent, it becomes more critical to isolate those units and eliminate them either through massed firepower or more likely strategically played CC, in which the priest is removed by attacking his IC status, further forcing tactical shifts for the BA player's plan and helping the opponent kill more BA and even score more KP. Once again, the way FNP is taken plays into the strategy of how each player plays the game on the table.
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The release of Dark Eldar has seen the FNP USR given through pain tokens, as a reward for either killing the enemy (again something the player must achieve) or through the use of combat drugs, supporting units (parasites) or HQ choices (again effecting list building and table strategy of movement and support). It is of interest for the DE player to get the tokens to keep his troops alive from basic fire and Vehicle Destroyed results, so he will adjust his list building or game play dependant on how much importance he places on getting the first pain token.
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For the DE opponent, the focus of effort depends on how the pain tokens were taken in the first place. If the DE player decided to take the Duke or a bunch of Homeneculi, then the opponent needs to focus his efforts on disabling the movement of the raiders that carry the DE units that will be most dangerous to him if they get more pain tokens. Harming the DE's momentum by making them leave behind their best units will slow the DE momentum down as a whole and that is how DE are defeated. If the DE player is relying on killing in order to gain pain tokens, then the strategy for the opponent is to take down the raiders where the most damage can be done first (taking down a wych raider can kill a lot of wyches, taking out an Archon's raider slows the whole army down one of the deadliest units and often one the army is relying on).
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With all that said, it is important to take a look at the fifth edition codices as an evolution on game play over how things were done in previous editions. Where 4th edition gave you no-brainer units and little beyond each player's plan in terms of strategy, 5th edition gives us moving stratagems and a more advanced form of game play, where rules, army-wide benefits and yes, FNP, play a major part of EACH player's strategy whether or not each has FNP or any other set of USRs. I am sure as more codices get updated, you will see USRs, including Feel No Pain, used in more dynamic ways. While it seems like more USRs on the board can take away from units like plague Marines, remember that the Chaos Codex has yet to receive an update and new, interesting and deadly ways to play the army are just over the next horizon. I for one am not upset about my plague Marines losing something unique as I am exited about the new strategies and game play that lie in store for an updated CSM codex.

10 comments:

  1. Fantastic article, OST! I'm with you on every point.

    My only complaint about FNP? The constant feeling of having to roll ever more and more dice. Imagine if you will, a unit shooting at a Death Company during night fight rules. That's dice for spotting, dice to hit (oh! Twin-Linked? Reroll!), dice to wound, dice for save, and finally dice for FNP. That's 5 rolls for 1 shot. At some point, someone has to realize we spend more than 50% of our games just rolling dice!

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  2. Point taken and a good one at that. The shifts in game play do often involve a lot of dice rolls, which can be fun against some opponents and and tedious against others.

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  3. Hmmm , Modifiers ..... nah to complicated for our tiny tiny minds ....

    Good article , I agree the USR's should be used more and in interesting ways , its good in the DE army but far from OP , as you said it just gives both players more to think about tactically, which can only be a GOOD thing .

    Cheers

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  4. I'd like to start with, I haven't played against the new DE codex yet.

    From a pure paper/theory look at things...I'm really not seeing the DE FNP as all that terrifying. On a Incubi its one thing but on a t3 5 or 6+ trooper, its not as terrible as on a marine.

    Standing in the open its more than likely that whatever is shooting your wych or warrior is going to have ap5 (I'm looking at your bolters) so really its like they just get a 4+ save.

    In CC however, that FNP is a totally different story for wyches with a 4/4 now so there for you're looking at a 75% chance to save. But really...that's what wyches are suppsed to do, dominate CC.

    Now, FNP being everywhere with marines is just annoying. t4 with a 3+ save is basically, with certain exceptions, making your assault squad have a 2+. And versus the above mentioned point, its taking something st8 to negate it. At least with wyches I'll be lolzing hard at my multi lasers denying FNP (but not the normal save).

    In the world of S/T 4 things like the billion space marine players/codexs, chaos, demons, orks, being t3 really hurts. I think as far as DE are concerned, that FNP is not nearly as cool as it was for Blood Angels to get. It'll help, but its not making me want to run out to get the new army (anymore).

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  5. Amen, brudda. Handing out USRs, especially the game-altering ones like Fleet and Feel No Pain, and especially based on conditions like 'one turn only' or 'based on kills/proximity', has done wonders for proper synergy in 40K. The usage of that word is shifting from 'what can my list do to the enemy?' for 'what can the components of my list do for each other, to the enemy, and with the mission and battlefield?', which I would read as an improvement...

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  6. Thanks for the feedback guys. I think sometimes it is just easy to lose sight of the way the edition change really only starts with the rule book. 5th edition is a beast that is only really starting to reveal itself as a revamp of how every army plays. I just hope CSM isn't the last dex updated ... until then, I have my Nids!

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  7. I have to say that FNP is almost a must with the new DE list. In most cases, now that I have gotten a few games under my belt, its the only "save" you have. this is especially true of the haemonculi, wracks and grotesques.
    Taking 3 haeminculi and putting them with my warrior units is one of my list basics as of now. I have yet to experiment with the Chronos Parasite engines. These guys generate tokens for just killing models. I see this as the basis of the power from pain list that will be in the forums soon as the beat all end all list. damn interwebs

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  8. USRs is a great mechanic. You must recall the days when there were 7 or 8 different lascannons with different stats for each army. Yeah. That was well thought out...

    USRs for war gaming are like CSS for HTML. It just makes sense. You can fine tune the way armies work across the board by changing just a couple of words in an FAQ or the rule book.

    I expect we'll see some more USRs popping up at some point once the whole studio catch on to how smart it is to use them. Unless they just let Phil write all the new army books and codices that is...

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  9. I agree that the synergistic approach is cool, when it makes sense. Fleet for one turn from a Waaagh is cool, one medic being able to help a bunch of spread out guys all at once, doesn't make as much sense.

    I do also look forward to playing some DE players who will get obsessed with the pursuit of pain tokens, leaving them in situations where they really need them. ;-) Yes, with a token you can survive that raider wreck easier, but moving up to get your squad that kill makes it much more likely that your raider will be wrecked in the first place...

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  10. I used to really look at the "how can a guy do that" stuff in the game with upgrades like medics. Seriously, how would this one medic in a single turn heal a bunch of heavy bolter rounds in a single turn (great example SoT), but looking at gameplay as fluff can just frustrate you. Sometimes, you just have to look at some stuff as a rules mechanic and then make fun of the fluff implications with your friends!

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